


Love Letters Never Sent

by devilinthedetails



Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Court Drama, F/M, Friendship, Love, Love Letters Never Sent, References to Sex, References to Suicide, epistolary form, references to death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-14 06:46:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29414346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilinthedetails/pseuds/devilinthedetails
Summary: A compilation of love letters Jon never sends Alanna. Set during Woman Who Rides Like a Man and Lioness Rampant. Written all in epistolary form.
Relationships: Alanna of Pirate's Swoop and Olau/Jonathan of Conté
Comments: 6
Kudos: 12





	Love Letters Never Sent

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Love and Distance event at Goldenlake.

To the very unladylike Alanna,

This letter is to inform you (wherever you are, I don’t know or care) that I have moved on from you completely and have entered into a relationship with someone else. A perfect princess. A proper court lady who has been schooled in all the gentle womanly graces since she was young. A stunning blonde from the ruling Rittevon line of the Copper Isles. A match approved by my mother, who is friends with hers. I deserve such happiness as I will find with her. 

I don’t know why I’m writing this letter at all since I don’t intend to send it, and I never think about you. You never cross my mind, I can promise you that. 

Not thinking about you at all,   
Jon

To the sharp-tongued Alanna,

I’ve been spending more time with Princess Josiane (that’s the name of the beautiful blonde I mentioned in my last unsent letter--your competition if you still hope to win my hand, and I know you do, because who wouldn’t want to marry a price who will be king one day?) lately. Riding with her. She only rides side-saddle and won’t race me as you would. Dancing with her in a way you never would with me because you hate dancing and had to pretend to be a boy for so long. Attempting to talk with her but she never says anything intelligent, and sometimes shares thoughts I can only classify as crazy. When we were together, you’d sometimes joke about how insanity ran in your family’s blood, but it truly does seem to flow like poison through the Rittevon line. Or maybe I am the crazy one. Perhaps you were my sanity, and you have fled from me. 

If you were here (but you aren’t, and that’s why I’m spending time with Josiane at all), you’d tease me mercilessly for how attached to my side the princess from the Copper Isles seems to be. I’d probably turn red in the face and snap at you, but inside I’d be laughing as I always am at the bold things you dare to say that others would be afraid to even think. You have a sharp-tongue that drives many people away, Alanna, but you do occasionally say clever things. More clever things than Josiane does, at any rate, and this theory has been confirmed by Gary. 

I asked him the other day if he thought you said smarter things than Josiane. He rolled his eyes at me and answered tartly that a clod of dirt says smarter things than Josiane. I understood what he was saying even though I’ve never known a clod of dirt to talk.

I miss your sharp tongue, Alanna, and I think Gary does as well. I hope you return from the desert soon, but you’ll have to return from the desert without this note. It’s another letter I plan on never sending to you because it makes me sound too crazy, and insanity doesn’t run in my line unlike yours and Josiane’s. 

From the decidedly not crazy,  
Jon

To the stubborn-hearted Alanna,

I saw Princess Josiane slap one of her maidservants so hard a scarlet mark stained her cheek for not fetching her fan fast enough. I’ve seen her shout and pinch at maidservants before, but this was the first time I ever saw her strike one. My mother has never struck a servant. Nor has my father. 

It is a shock to see how cruel and cold-blooded she can be. I’ve never seen you be cruel and cold-blooded to the servants even if you are abominably stubborn. You were always respectful of Timon and Coram and the common soldiers we fought with during the Tusaine war. 

I don’t want a cruel and cold-blooded woman for my wife nor do I want a cruel and cold-blooded queen for my people. You wouldn’t be a cruel and a cold-blooded queen, I know that much. 

Perhaps you’d be too fiery as queen, offending the wrong people and unable to engage in necessary diplomacy and appropriate courtesies. Josiane doesn’t seem to be the right queen for me no matter what my mother believes, but I’m not certain that you are either. Yet I proposed to you, and in honor, I wouldn’t revoke that proposal even if you did refuse it in your temper. If you do wish to marry me whenever you return from wherever you are wandering, I will honor my word, but I do now wonder and worry whether I shall ever find the right queen for me and for Tortall. Someone who isn’t cruel and cold-blooded but perhaps isn’t as fiery as you but can still be stubborn and stand up to me? Does such a creature exist in all the world? 

These wouldn’t be appropriate musings to share with you even if I did know where to send this letter, and I don’t. 

Wondering and worrying about this confusing thing the bards call love,  
Jon

To my friend Alanna,

Last night, you visited me in my dreams, and I remembered how you saved my life during the Sweating Sickness. How you dragged me back from the Black God’s greedy clutches when I believed I was dying. I was delirious and hallucinating at the time, but still I remembered how you rescued me. I will always remember that however much we argue. I’m alive only because of you, and that means I’m bound to you forever. Whether or not I want to be bound to you. Whether or not you wish to be bound to me. 

I don’t know why I dreamed of you pulling me back from the brink of death except that sometimes my mother seems to have one foot in her grave, and I wish that somebody could heal her as you cured my Sweating Sickness. 

I couldn’t go back to sleep after waking up in a sweat, remembering how you saved me when you were a page. 

The vulnerable and the dreamless,  
Jon

To the twin Alanna,

Knowing you as well and deeply as I do (even if you are mad at me, you can’t deny that I know you deeply--perhaps more deeply than anyone), I figured that you must be the more difficult twin to deal with, but that is not so. Your twin is more insufferable than you, bragging about his magical powers and showing off his feats of sorcery every day. He has promised that he would perform whatever stunning feat of sorcery anyone dared of him just to prove beyond any doubt that he can and demonstrate beyond all possible dispute that he is the greatest wizard in history. Greater even than Duke Roger. 

I wish he wouldn’t mention Duke Roger. I wish to forget my traitorous cousin, may he rot forever in the ground. 

I also wish that you were at court to turn your boastful brother into a toad for us but I know that you are traveling wherever the wind takes you, and likely still furious at me for how we parted, so I will wisely not try to send this to you. 

Tired of arrogant mages,  
Jon

To the fearsome swordswoman Alanna,

You will be appalled to learn that your brother has raised Roger from the dead, undoing all the good work you did when you killed him. Lady Delia dared Thom to do it, demanding that he prove he had the power to call back the dead, and he did it. Your brother has a great deal of pride and book learning but doesn’t have the common sense to fill an acorn, I’m afraid. If he had the common sense to fill an acorn, he would’ve raised literally anyone else from the dead. Like your mother or father, for instance. 

I wish you had been here to smack some sense into your brother’s big head before he resurrected Roger and to dispatch Roger to the gods now that he is cursing us with his presence once again. 

I need you, but I can’t tell you how much, because I still I don’t where I can send this letter and be sure that you will read it. 

Extremely distrubed that Roger is back among the living,   
Jon

To the redoubtable Alanna,

There is no easy way to say this especially in letter form, but because my father refused to declare Roger a traitor at his death, the resurrected Roger retains all his previous lands and titles. Moreover, my father has decreed in council that Roger may not be punished for any offenses that he committed when last he was alive and that he has already suffered the penalty of death, which may not be inflicted on him a second time for the same offense. Thus, the glittering Roger enjoys a position of power at court once again while Mother, who suffered from his evil magic, sickens daily. 

This letter would only make you burn with wrath as I am now, so if you ever read it, your blazing eyes would reduce it to cinders. Perhaps then it is best that you will never read it, and it will remain forever for my eyes only. 

Raging at my father’s impotency in the face of treason,  
Jon

To the motherless Alanna,

In the past, especially when I believed you to be a boy, I often reflected on how sad it was that you had a father who didn’t care about you, which was like having no father at all. I was glad that Uncle Gareth chose you as one of his favorites, giving you special lessons and advice. I was grateful, too, that Sir Myles took you under his wing and that with him you had someone to play chess with and visit the mysterious ruins of the Old Ones at Olau. Coram also wasn’t bad as far as father figures go even if he was a commoner. 

I never thought--even when I learned that you were hiding your identity as a girl from me all those years---how hard it must have been for you to go through life without a mother’s comfort and love. 

My own mother is worsening every day. She is fading from me. I can feel it every time her frail fingers squeeze mine. Soon she will be at peace in the Realms of the Dead. That thought should comfort me according to the Black God’s priests but it only grieves and angers me. I’m not a very pious prince, apparently. I don’t know what I will do without my mother. She gave me life at great cost to herself and has always loved and supported me. I will miss her every day, and I don’t know what her death will do to my father, either. He loves her the way the stars love the moon or the sky, I think. It will kill something vital and essential inside him to lose her. I know it, and that knowledge fills me with foreboding. 

I feel like a seer cursed with visions of death and destruction for unknown crimes. 

Your sad and tortured prince,   
Jon

To the much-needed Alanna,

My mother is dead. That sentence seems so stark and terrible, a blot of black on a white piece of parchment. A stain of grief that can never be washed out. 

We buried her today. Everyone wore dark colors and laid lilies over her tomb in the crypts, but she still seems like she will be so lonely and cold down there. 

Father weeps and has no interest in government or in me, his heir. I don’t know how to comfort him or recall him to his duties to a realm in chaos. 

I feel lost and in turmoil myself, cast adrift on a turbulent ocean. Likely to drown if I don’t crash against a rocky shore. 

Maybe you could be my rocky shore if you would just return to court where you are needed. 

Trying not to crumble into despair like my father,  
Jon

To the still achingly absent Alanna,

My father went hunting today. He never came back alive. I can’t help but remember the last time I saw him. His head was low, and his eyes shadowed with sorrow. I had wanted to hug him when I saw him, but I hadn’t because I was afraid of feeling how weak grief had made him. Now I wish that I had rushed to him, held him, and never let go. 

Then he wouldn’t be dead now, but I suspect--and this suspicion is the most painful thing, clenching my heart like a bullying fist--that death was what he wanted. He wanted to be with my mother, even if that meant being dead. Even if that meant abandoning me. Abandoning his kingdom with Roger returned and poised to wreak further havoc. 

He must have wanted to die, Alanna, because the hunting accident occurred over a ravine he has leapt over a thousand times without fail. He must have failed on purpose, and as much as I miss him, I can’t help hating him for that. 

I know I’m wrong to hate my own father whose blood flows in my veins. Anyone would tell me that. Anyone except you. You’d understand that feeling because I know how you felt about your own father who neglected you. Or your birth father at any rate. Your adoptive father didn’t neglect you at least. 

If you were here, I could talk to you in person about my grief, my guilt, and my rage instead of writing this letter to you that I know I will never send because I have no idea where in this lonely, sorrowful world you are. 

I do love you, and hope that you find your way back to me some day. 

Lost and praying you find me,  
Jon

To the better-versed-in-history Alanna,

Between meeting with Gary to discuss how best we should try to run this country, I had a self-pitying thought that I know you’d shake out of me if you were here but you aren’t so I indulged in the self-pity, bathing in it like warm water. 

I got to considering my plight--my mother and father dying in such swift succession and my traitorous mage uncle back from the dead back to do more plotting and backstabbing, no doubt--and wondered if any king in history had to face so many headaches before their coronation. 

That in turn got me remembering how much better at history you always were. How we would study history together, our heads pressed closely together as we read our books, reviewed our notes, and wrote our essays for Sir Myles on our scrolls. Late into the night, we would sit like that as the candles flickered around us. We were so near to each other than that I could have stroked your hair or brushed a hand across your cheek, but I hadn’t wanted to then, not when I thought you were a boy. 

I don’t know when we’ll be that near to each other again or if we will ever be that near to each other again. Maybe you’ll never trust me enough to get that near to me again. Perhaps I hurt you that badly without truly meaning to wound you at all, speaking out of my own pain without thought for how much my words could sting you. 

You feel so far away from me, and I wish that you were near. 

Feeling the weight of history without you,  
Jon

To the very kissable Alanna,

Today I kissed Princess Josiane, and it was terrible. Like kissing a frozen fish because I don’t love her. 

My awful kiss with her had me thinking of the better kisses I shared with you. I remember our first kiss during the Tusaine war. It was awkward because we were at war and you were pretending to be a boy and my squire, but it was still wonderful. You felt so warm and soft against me, leaning against me in the saddle because you were worn out from healing the wounded with Duke Baird. 

I remember how we kissed in the palace gardens when I saw you sneaking about in your dress. I remember all the kisses and the love we shared in the early mornings as dawn fell blood-red to day and late at night when only the moon and stars were awake. 

The love between us burned both of us like fire, and maybe it seared and scarred us to our very souls. Maybe it was a blazing passion that we’ll each only feel once in our lives for anyone. Perhaps we’ll never feel that way about anybody else in our lives, and maybe that’s a mercy. Perhaps humans aren’t meant to love with a passion like that, because it hurts, sears, and scars. 

Despite the hurting, the searing, and the scarring, I am grateful for the kisses and the love we shared, and I hope in time you will come to feel the same. That you will come to forgive me for the searing and the scarring. I was young--we were both young--and I didn’t know how painful love could be. I didn’t know how to love you better. I didn’t even really know what love was. I only knew how to love you passionately because that was instinct. Like a moth flying to a flame. 

Forever the moth drawn to your flame,  
Jon

To Alanna the Lioness,

I spoke with Uncle Gareth today. He wryly hinted that soon after my coronation, he would wish to retire from his post as King’s Champion because his bones are starting to get old and aching. He has looked diminished since Mother’s death--he must feel that he failed to protect her as an elder brother should--and you must be prepared for that when you see him again, but still his is not a sword I’d want to tangle with as I imagine he’d still beat me handily. 

I don’t think he could beat you any more, though, and he might believe the same because he suggested that a certain Lioness (that’s become his nickname for you now that he can’t call you “lad”) might be well-suited for filling the post. 

I think he shows great wisdom as ever. I want you to be my Champion as he was my father’s. 

Admiring how far your scrappy self has come since we first met,   
Jon

To my future Champion, 

As a king awaiting my coronation, I have command of the King’s Own. I need a man who can transform it from a bunch of second sons who live only to drink and dance at court to a force that isn’t afraid to fight in defense of this country. I have decided that Raoul is just the man to preside over such a transformation. I have relieved the previous Knight Commander of his duties although he has tried to spread the scurrilous lie that he resigned from his post instead to save his battered pride. 

I have sent Raoul into the world to find you wherever you are on some quest I do not know and would not understand. He will bring you back to me because I need you by my side as my sword and Champion. That is the only way that I can lead Tortall forward. You will be my strength and my shield in this, my hour of greatest need, and I will reward your fealty always. 

In best faith and friendship,  
Jon


End file.
